One of my good friends here Fiona Saxby, was was recently chosen as one of eight Young Queensland Volunteers of the Year. Fiona was on my DTS. It’s really cool to see how God is using her to impact the Youth of Australia and the World.
Below is the media release.
Picture an average Australian girl – dark hair, fun-loving, social and smart. That is the picture of Fiona Saxby, raised in Mackay and living in Townsville as a full-time volunteer for the past 4 ½ years with Youth With a Mission Reef to Outback… and far from your average Australia girl. Saxby was recently chosen as one of eight Young Queensland Volunteers of the Year and will be honored tonight, the 22ndof April in Brisbane at the Queensland Young Volunteer Awards. The Honourable Lindy Nelson-Carr MP will be hosting the event to celebrate in young people of our region making a difference.
For the past two years, Fiona has helped pioneer a key method of connecting with youth called “Youth Street.” Youth Street uses peer-based mentoring to reach out to 12-17 year old youth. Each Saturday youth participate in skate, dance, music or sport and as they learn new skills, they’re also learning critical life skills.
Fiona leads a crew of over 30 other volunteers to make Youth Street happen each week. Not only are they working with kids on Saturdays, but they are connecting with these youth and their parents throughout the week as well. And the rewards have been amazing! Over 7,000 youth have participated and there have been incredible successes.
In addition to Youth Street, Fiona has also started a not-for-profit design company called “Moses Streetware.” Fiona has incredible artistic talent and has created a line of t-shirts. The profit goes to help the poor and needy. This is what she does in her “spare time” – and she loves it!
Below is a video from our local news station.
Youtube blocked? Don’t have quicktime? Click here to view on Godtube?
My job here at Reef to Outback is to oversee Registrar/Personnel and the four girls that work in it. I absolutely love what I do; anyone who has any queries about RTO or a Discipleship Training School or other training programs or opportunities usually go are filtered through our office. Lately, our Media department has been working on new ads and website stuff which has attracted heaps more young people interested in missions. So we’ve been receiving about 50 enquiries a week specifically for Discipleship Training Schools which is awesome! We’ve never had that large of a number per week before and we’re growing by the minute
With each enquiry we send them a bit of info and then call them a few days later to see if they have any questions, connect and explain what we do here at RTO. I love calling people and talking to them, seeing what their interests are and encouraging them that God uses everything that we’re interested in to reach people. Also, speaking to people on the phone is a great opportunity to pray for people and encourage them in the Lord.
With the great increase of enquiries, so increases our work load! One of the main girls doing DTS Registrar stacked on the responsibility and tasks and was having a bit of trouble trying to reach an extra 50 people through-out the week by phone, considering we can usually only do phone calls in the morning due to international time differences.
So my friend Ania had a great idea: OPERATION LTL (Lighten the Load). The five of us girls decided we needed to get up early, help our dear friend Amelia out and power through some of these phone calls. We all woke at 0400 hours, suited up and rendezvoused at the office at 0500 hours for our operation. Awaiting us were ration packs of juice boxes and granola bars next to our name tags. I was "The General," and there was also "SEAL Ops," "Command Central," and "Recon." We didn’t wait long to fire our weapons! We called over 100 people that morning!
It was a great day knowing we had reached so many people and knowing we had taken a huge load off of Amelia; we’re a great team and we operate well with each other and are always having a great time. Now we have three DTS Registrars and we’re still trying to figure this whole process out! Enjoy our pictures; some of them we very well may of been delirious in.
Last term myself and my friend Dennis started a Media team as a part of our Saturday afternoon program called YouthStreet . The year is broken up into four terms. We started the Media team in the middle of the first term. This past Saturday was the first day of the second term. We had seven crew on our media team! The previous highest was four. It was really excited to have that many crew. Our focus for this past Saturday was Video.
I stared off the day be showing them some epic movie screens and then we watched some behind the scenes stuff to see how the clips were made. I then taught Final Cut Pro for a few minutes. Final Cut is a massive program that takes a while to learn. We are going to learn it in little bits at a time. After a bit of teach, the crew where given time to make a video. I had already put some footage of the computers. They had to put it in the time line how they wanted it. They had to add transitions and effects. It was a lot of fun. The crew really enjoyed it.
On the beach of course! Josiah and I were invited to a wedding that we desperately wanted to attend, but due to extravagant airfares we finally decided we just couldn’t. But then…I found out that the people going down to the Easterfest were stopping by Sydney for the wedding before they drove back up! Although the both of us wouldn’t be able to attend, at least one of us would! Instead of spending over $400 to get there, I had to chip in for petrol which was under $80 with all of us combined! Isn’t that awesome?
So…the beach was located at Cronulla Beach in Sydney, down a cliff-face (which I was one of many escorts helping ladies climb down in their cute dresses and high-heels) and directly on the sand in front of the water. Absolutely beautiful. As were the bride and groom…stunning. Everyone was so excited to see such a great, powerful couple who continue to seek God in their leadership and through each other unite as one. I was so thankful I was able to celebrate with them such a special day. It was just so much fun.
Remember those pictures of us digging the 3.6 ton OKA out of mud a few months ago? Well, I rode in that vehicle for over 50 hours! Yeah…tell me about it…my neck was pretty sore after bouncing around in that massive lunchbox on wheels.
Myself and eight other RTO staff drove 18 hours south down to a town called “Toowoomba” (fun to say, eh?) which is two hours west of Brisbane. Toowoomba holds the southern hemisphere’s largest Christian music fest in which we (as RTO staff) were able to set up a booth next to our OKA and promote missions to hundreds of young Australian youth. It was so awesome to get to talk to heaps of young adults about options of pursuing passions in missions, whether it be musical, digital or health care. Getting to see so many young men’s reactions to our OKA was fun, too. I call outreach in the OKA up to the tip of Cape York (the isolated northernmost of Australia) the ultimate man’s mission trip. Taking an all-terrain vehicle through the mud and creeks, ministering to the indigenous of the land, and helping out in communities from evangelism to sports camps to repairing fences…c’mon, what is there that a man wouldn’t like?! Yes, we do have girls go along as well..
Anyways, it was so great to exchange stories and hear so many people’s heart for their country and the world. I was definitely thankful to the girls I worked with for donating and helping make it possible. I love doing promotional and PR stuff, anything with talking to people basically about how you can let the Lord use what we love for His glory, especially since He’s the one that created inside us to begin with! And for a bonus, we got to hear some great bands including Newboys, Jars of Clay, MxPx and Project 86. I only went for a few, you know you’re getting old when you think a band is “too loud.”
We held our third A Voice in the Dark concert here at YWAM Reef to outback about a week and a half ago. The concert was awesome. We had around 150 people come to the show. We raised just over $500 for the Tamar Center in Thailand. We streamed the concert live over the internet and had around 340 people watch parts of the show. The concert was also played live on LiveFm. Which is our local Christian radio station. It was just an epic night. I oversaw the technical side of the night and it a great opportunity for me.
Here is the video reel of the night. We have three bands perform. Approaching Aver, Not Without, and The Forest. Not Without is the band from the YWAM Reef to Outback School of Music and Misions. They are currently on outreach in Thailand working with the Tamar Center. They were able to take the money we raised over there and give it to them. Approaching Aver and The Forest are local bands from Townsville.
